Lighthouse Design
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software development |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Founder | Alan Chung, Roger Rosner, Jonathan Schwartz, Kevin Steele, Brian Skinner |
| Defunct | 1996 |
| Fate | Acquired by Sun Microsystems |
| Headquarters | San Mateo , United States |
Area served | United States |
| Products | Diagram!, Exploder, ParaSheet, Quantrix, TaskMaster, WetPaint, LightPlan, Concurrence |
| Parent | Sun Microsystems (from 1996) |
Lighthouse Design Ltd. was a United States-based software firm that operated between 1989 and 1996, concentrating on software development for NeXT machines running the NeXTSTEP platform. The company was established in Bethesda, Maryland by Alan Chung, Roger Rosner, Jonathan Schwartz, Kevin Steele, and Brian Skinner before moving its headquarters to San Mateo, California. In 1996, it became part of Sun Microsystems through acquisition.
History
Among its initial offerings was Diagram!, a diagramming application initially called BLT (Box-and-Line Tool), which featured "smart links" to connect elements for creating flowcharts and related diagrams. Another product, Exploder, facilitated the storage of Objective-C objects within relational database systems. Lighthouse sold Diagram! directly and spun off Exploder in 1991 as a separate company named Persistence Software, which later went public in 1999.
The company broadened its software range with an office suite designed for NeXTSTEP that included ParaSheet (a conventional spreadsheet), Quantrix (a spreadsheet inspired by Lotus Improv), Diagram!, TaskMaster (project management software), WetPaint (image editing), LightPlan (a data modeling tool based on OMT and derived from Diagram!), and Concurrence (presentation software).
During the early 1990s, Sun Microsystems collaborated with NeXT to create OpenStep—a cross-platform iteration of NeXTSTEP’s higher-level components—aimed at distributed computing environments by running OpenStep on desktops and handling transaction processing on Solaris servers. Communication was managed via NeXT’s Portable Distributed Objects technology, also known as Distributed Objects Everywhere (DOE), later renamed NEO.
Sun Microsystems acquired Lighthouse in 1996 for $22 million, incorporating it into their internal OpenStep applications division. CEO Scott McNealy sought to establish a competitor to Microsoft by developing a comprehensive office suite. Although Lighthouse’s applications were behind Microsoft Office in terms of maturity, they showed promise with additional refinement.
Nevertheless, Sun redirected its strategy away from DOE/NEO and OpenStep towards a "Java everywhere" approach, prioritizing Java’s platform independence over OpenStep’s more limited scope. Lighthouse was absorbed into Sun’s Java Applications Group, but converting Objective-C OpenStep applications into Java proved unfeasible. Additionally, concerns that Sun’s own office suite might discourage third-party software development influenced this shift. Some initiatives included porting LightPlan to Java as JavaPlan with UML capabilities; however, Sun ultimately withdrew from the office productivity market for several years.
The legacy of Lighthouse’s office suite persisted externally: OmniGroup replicated Diagram! through their product OmniGraffle, preserving much of its original functionality.
In 1999, Sun reentered the office suite sector by acquiring the C++-based StarOffice. According to Lighthouse co-founder Schwartz, it is improbable that the original Lighthouse suite will ever be released publicly again.
Schwartz progressed within Sun Microsystems, taking charge of its software division in 2002 and ascending to CEO and President in April 2006.
See also
External links
- Archive of Lighthouse Design's products. Accessed June 6, 2011.